A surface accumulator of Escherichia coli in water flow

Abstract

The objective of this research is to design and optimise a mini/micro-channel based surface accumulator of Escherichia coli to be detected by acoustic wave biosensors. A computational research has been carried out using the state of the art software, CFD-ACE with water as bacteria bearing fluid. E. coli bacteria have been modelled as random discrete particles tracked by solving the Lagrangian equations. The design challenges are to achieve low shear force (pico-N), high concentration at accumulation and high enough Reynolds number to avoid bacteria swimming. A range of low Reynolds number (Re) from 28.2 to 58.3 has been considered along with the effects of particle–boundary interactions, gravity, Saffman lift and Magnus lift. About four orders of magnitude higher concentration at accumulation than the inlet concentration and lower shear force in the order of less than pico-N have been achieved in the optimised design with particles accumulating at a specific location under random particle–boundary interactions.

Keywords:

• surface accumulator
• E. coli
• water flow
• computational

Acknowledgement

Funding for this work was through a grant from the US Army TACOM titled ‘Real-Time Biosensor Water Monitoring System’.